TANKS Travel Tales - a travelogue.......

Year 2023 Personal Travel Wrap-up......  And so, 2023 is nearing its goodbyes and we are all looking forward to a brand new year in 2024. For travelers, a brand new travel year beckons. Personally, 2023 marks the first year when leisure travel truly resumes, after 2020 and 2021. Yes, I traveled a fair bit in 2022 compared to the two preceding years. But travel in 2022 was tentative, punctuated by the need to handle cumbersome vaccination certifications submissions prior to each trip, downloading official apps from individual countries and registering on these apps before embarkation, masks wearing, expensive travel insurance as well as limitations in where one can travel to. All these requirements were thankfully, slowly peeled away towards the end of 2022. Year 2023 is when we feel like normal again. Truth be told, COVID-19 is still everywhere, endemic. However, a combination of annual vaccinations and naturally acquired immunity from previous infections by previous strains of the...

Month-long Pan-Asia Trip, East and South-Asia Asia This was a major trip which took me months to plan. Because there were many key details to follow such as accommodation, train travel times and inter-city transport connectivities, I had to cancel and re-book many of my hotels and train tickets bookings repeatedly. And also because I was visiting many of the places for the first time, my only source of information was from the internet. Not much of this information was accurate and some of the inaccuracies nearly resulted in me missing my inter-city connections. Lesson learnt and note to self, take information from the internet with a big pinch of salt! But this was a wonderful trip. I am unlikely to be able to go on such a long trip with so many different destinations in one single vacation again anytime soon. Work schedule always dictates that I can go away for at most two weeks at any one time. Thus, I was really glad I...

Slightly more than two decades after my first visit to Ho Chi Minh City, I finally returned for a second visit when my cruise ship made a port call at nearby Phú Mỹ in August 2023.  Vibrant as usual, the city has certainly grown a lot since my first visit. There are now a lot more large towering office complexes and modern residential homes. More importantly for visitors like myself, delicious food are everywhere. During my short few hours onshore, I managed to dine on my favourite Pho noodles, sight-see, took selfies to commemorate my trip and enjoyed a quick ride through Chinatown on my tour coach. I also visited favourite touristy sites like the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Saigon Central Post Office and the Reunification Palace (a.k.a. Independence Palace, Reunification Convention Hall). Skyscrapers, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2023) Pho, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2023) Pho side dish, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2023) Vietnamese Coffee, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2023)

Note from the Author: This article was originally written in February 2000 based on my first ever visit to Ho Chi Minh City. Many years have passed since and I am quite sure many of the places mentioned herein have changed. The currency exchange rates mentioned in this article were based on the prevailing rates at the time of my visit. The photographs that accompanied this article were taken by myself using 35mm films and scanned into digital format simply because digital photography in the year 2000 was still in its infancy! Thus, I apologize for the relatively "low quality" of these photos. Time flies and it has been 14 years since that visit. This reminds me to make another visit to this awesome city to see for myself how much things have changed since! - Timothy, Sep 2014       Saigon was the former capital of South Vietnam prior to the official reunification of the country in 1976. After reunification, Saigon was renamed as Ho Chi Minh City. Today, Ho Chi Minh C...